from the you-can-compete-with-free dept

"You can't compete with free!" is the mantra of a number of copyright maximalists -- and no matter how many times we show them examples of people successfully competing with free, it's still taken as inviolable law by some. Yet, here we are with yet another example of it happening anyway. As you know, last week the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released its CIA torture report (or, rather, the redacted version of the executive summary of the full report). It is a gripping read, and you can read the whole thing here (or embedded below). We can post it here for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the document is in the public domain, as a work of the federal government.

A little over ten years ago, we noted that the famed 9/11 Commission Report, despite also being in the public domain, had become a best seller in its printed version -- even though it, too, was in the public domain. It appears something similar is happening with the CIA torture report. There is a Kindle version that costs $2.99, and despite the report being available as a PDF (which can be viewed on Kindle), the fee-based version of the torture report is the number one seller in the "intelligence & espionage" section (beating out James Risen's recent book Pay Any Price). And this is happening despite the fact that people on Amazon are warning people not to buy the fee-based Kindle version, posting comments to tell them it's just a PDF that's available for free.

Yet, it appears that the convenience factor has made it worthwhile to an awful lot of people, who are willing to pay the money rather than figure out how to get the PDF onto their kindle. As we've pointed out for years, things like convenience and ease-of-use are real selling points -- and it's why things like Netflix and Spotify have been shown to decrease infringement -- because it's worth paying a little extra for a better-to-use system.

Meanwhile, physical copies of the CIA torture report are being rushed out with at least one publisher, Melville House, saying it will be out by the end of the year -- though, I'd imagine others will follow suit. In Michele Boldrin and David Levine's book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, they have a fascinating discussion on how publisher W.W. Norton made out wonderfully in being the first to publish a hard copy of the 9/11 Commission Report, despite not having to pay any copyright royalties:

The 81-year-old publisher struck an unusual publishing
deal with the 9/11 commission back in May: Norton agreed
to issue the paperback version of the report on the day of
its public release.…Norton did not pay for the publishing
rights, but had to foot the bill for a rush printing and
shipping job; the commission did not hand over the
manuscript until the last possible moment, in order to
prevent leaks. The company will not reveal how much this
cost, or when precisely it obtained the report. But expedited
printings always cost extra, making it that much more
difficult for Norton to realize a profit.

In addition, the commission and Norton agreed in May on
the 568-page tome's rather low cover price of $10, making
it that much harder for the publisher to recoup its costs.
(Amazon.com is currently selling copies for $8 plus
shipping, while visitors to the Government Printing Office
bookstore in Washington, D.C. can purchase its version of
the report for $8.50.) There is also competition from the
commission's Web site, which is offering a downloadable
copy of the report for free. And Norton also agreed to
provide one free copy to the family of every 9/11 victim.

As Boldrin and Levine point out, according to copyright system supporters, this situation couldn't possibly work out. After all, Norton is agreeing to publish a work that anyone can get for free, and which any other publisher (including the federal government) can offer for sale at a lower price. In fact, the book notes, a rival publisher, St. Martin's, teamed up with the NY Times and got a second physical copy on the market just a couple of weeks after Norton's physical copy, and priced it at $8.50. Clearly, Norton got a bad deal, right? And yet, Norton sold 1.1 million copies of the book, and donated $600,000 in "profits" from the book to charity. But, you know, you can't compete with free (and public domain).

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Publishing content digitally is a topic that comes up around here fairly regularly. If you're a longtime Techdirt reader, you'll know that we generally think digital publishing drives down the price of content to free (but that doesn't mean your work is worthless!) and giving away content is often a very effective promotional tactic for selling other things that can't be freely copied. Here are just a few interesting examples of free content you can peruse at your leisure.

In case you can't read that, it involves Schiller complaining to Jobs and other top Apple execs about a Kindle TV ad that shows someone buying an ebook via an iPhone and having it appear on an Android phone as well. He then notes:

While the primary message is that there are Kindle apps on lots of mobile devices, the secondary message that can't be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android.

Not fun to watch

Less than an hour later, Jobs replies with a suggestion:

The first step might be to say that they must use our payment system for everything, including books (triggered by the newspapers and magazines). If they want to compare us to Android, let's force them to use our far superior payment system. Thoughts?

That's pretty damning, as it shows the decision had little to do with reasonable choices for consumers, and a lot to do with punishing a competitor.

I have received multiple reports (here, here,here) today that Amazon is now refusing to allow their Canadian customers to buy Kindle ebooks from Amazon.com.

Over the past couple days several of those readers have reported that many Kindle titles are showing up on Amazon.com as not being available to Canadian customers even though the same titles will show up on Amazon.ca as being available.

So far as I can tell, the only ebooks still available to Canadian Kindle owners are titles distributed via KDP, seriously limiting their ability to make use of their Kindles.

What seems to be happening is a push by Amazon to move customers from other countries over to their local domains, something that has been reported in Brazil, Japan and France. Other news has filtered in that this is not necessarily Amazon's doing, but is a result of publishers "moving" product to non-US regions where pricing is still advantageous (i.e., not subject to the terms of the settlements reached with the Justice Department in the ebook price-fixing investigation).

No matter who is at fault, it's the users that are getting the shaft. Amazon has only been selling Kindle ebooks to Canadians since late in 2009, but many Canadians have been purchasing ebooks through Amazon's .com domain since 2007. (Its .ca Kindle store has only been around since December of 2012.) Forcing Canadian users to set up a new .ca account means that much of what their .com accounts contain won't transfer over.

First, while Amazon claims that any purchased ebooks will be available* after a Canadian Kindle owner transfers their account that’s not completely true. The ebooks might be transferred, but I’m told that a customer’s purchase history is not transferred and the wish lists are also abandoned. That’s going to make it a lot harder for some readers to keep track of what they own and what they want to buy.

Oh, and that claim about the Kindle content transferring isn’t exactly true. Amazon.ca doesn’t yet support subscriptions, nor does it offer Kindle Serials. That means this Kindle content will be lost in the transfer process along with any back issues that had been saved. What’s more, Amazon.ca doesn’t offer music and video so transferring an account will prevent customers from accessing media they’ve already purchased.

After speaking to Amazon Kindle support they informed us that this change was not their doing. They said a change like this would have been made by the publisher only. One of the major publishers affected responded back to me saying, “It certainly wasn’t our intentional doing; although it may be a side-effect of our pricing model. I’ll investigate and see what I can do.”

For Canadian users (and customers in Brazil, Japan, France, etc.), it doesn't really matter which party is forcing the migration. The end result is a very possible loss of purchased content and a definite loss of purchase histories, preferences and a number of other small, but essential, perks that are part of a long-term Amazon account. This is going to hit the most loyal customers the hardest -- the last thing Amazon should want to do.

While there are many ways to route around this new issue, the fact remains that migrating a customer's account should keep it intact, especially when there's no perceived benefit for the end user. If this is publishers reshuffling their offerings to take advantage of out-of-US pricing, it's in Amazon's best interest to point this out. If this is Amazon's doing, it needed to have the kinks worked out before pushing it on its customers.

from the overkill dept

Last week we had a story of Amazon pulling a book because of a dispute over the term "space marine," which Games Workshop insisted they have full control over due to their trademark (a massive exaggeration of what protections the trademark provides). The latest may be even worse. As a number of folks are reporting, Amazon has pulled a self-published memoir by Gib Van Ert entitled A Long Time Ago: Growing Up With and Out of Star Wars.

Thank you for the information you provided regarding the following book(s):

A Long Time Ago: Growing Up With And Out Of Star Wars (2353856)

Your book(s) contains references to the trademarked term, “Star Wars (Trademarked Term)”. We have reviewed the information you provided and have determined that we will not be making the book(s) available for sale in the Kindle store at this time. While we cannot advise you on trademark laws, we encourage you to conduct your own research by possibly going to your local library or using other online resources that may be available to you.

This seems silly. The use is clearly descriptive, and the memoir discusses the impact of the movie on the guy's life. No "moron in a hurry" is going to assume that it is endorsed by Lucasfilm or anything like that. The likelihood of confusion here is nil. But in our risk averse age, where too many people incorrectly think that trademark gives you 100% control over a phrase, we see more and more unfortunate stories like this. Hopefully, Amazon quickly reconsiders... and the publicity from this silly bout of blocking leads to more sales.

Remember how Waterstones was going to sell the Kindle and take a sales commission on the hardware and any ebooks bought from that device? Apparently they decided that the subtle but positive relationship of simply making money off the Kindle wasn't good enough; now they've turned the Kindles they sell into billboards.

The Kindles sold by Waterstones got a firmware update in early November. This update wasn't rolled out to all the Kindles, and for good reason. According to a couple different users (this story has also been confirmed by Waterstones) the only change in the update was a new screensaver.

I have not yet seen it myself, but the Kindle owners are reporting that all the screensavers have been replaced by a Waterstones logo. Furthermore, there's no way to disable or replace that screensaver, so every time these Kindle owners pick up their device they will be reminded where they purchased it.

Advertising on the Kindle is nothing new. The ad-supported version is available at a discount if the buyer's willing to put up with being advertised at in exchange for a price break. But, as The Digital Reader points out, Waterstones-branded Kindles aren't discounted.

Instead, as thanks for purchasing a portable Amazon ecosystem from a brick-and-mortar, Waterstones' customers are now locked into a single screensaver that will constantly remind them who they need to contact for a full refund... which, unbelievably, Waterstones is actually offering.

I am sorry you are disappointed by the addition of a Waterstones screensaver after the recent software update to Kindle. It is our view that this screensaver does not constitute advertising and differs substantially to the advertising-supported Kindles available to the US market. The Waterstones screensaver is a non-dynamic, static image that will change infrequently and not advertise any specific product, offer or website.

It is not possible to remove the Waterstones screensaver to replace it with the former Amazon screensaver. We apologise that this change was made without consultation, and hope it does not detract from or alter your reading experience. However, if you feel it does, please let us know and we will arrange for the return of the device and a full refund.

"There are substantial difficulties for us around working with our major competitor," Daunt said at the Independent Publishers Guild Digital Quarterly Meeting on Tuesday, according to The Bookseller. "But we think we have an agreement which protects some of the most significant bear traps that sit there, and there are some major upsides for us."

Notably, Daunt didn't say that the agreement protects Waterstones from "significant bear traps." Instead, his Freudian slippage states that the traps themselves will be unharmed, even if, as it appears, Waterstones has to trigger the traps on its own.

The deal was never advantageous, what with Waterstones making the most money when purchasers bought ebooks using its in-store wifi network. It's hard to believe this strategy of getting customers into the physical store in hopes that they'd spend part of the time shopping on their Kindles has paid off. Perhaps the always-on "W" is meant to remind customers where they purchased their Kindles and why not go have a look around the bookstore a bit then.

On the plus side, Waterstones customers were threatened withwarned about promised some additional bonuses for their branded Kindles during this rollout announcement:

At yesterday's IPG event, Daunt revealed a few more details about Waterstones' Amazon partnership. "Waterstones-specific Kindle screensavers, bestseller lists and a Read For Free offer are among the plans," The Bookseller reports.

That's a pretty frickin' specific screensaver, Daunt. Shame it changes so "infrequently" as to be completely undetectable.

When her ebooks became unavailable, Linn Jordet Nygaard, the customer in question, contacted Amazon to find out what had happened. She received the following reply:

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.

But the account holder claims to know nothing about any other account, and so she wrote back asking for more details:

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.

Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

Unhelpfully, then, Amazon simply re-iterated that the newly-closed account was "related" to another, previously blocked account, wouldn't say why, and emphasized that this was an irrevocable ban, even to the extent of refusing to allow the person accused of this unspecified transgression to open any other account at any point in the future.

Again, Jordet Nygaard not unreasonably sought to find out what the problem was so that she could try to address it. This time, she received an email that is not only willfully unhelpful, but positively insulting thanks to a cheesy veneer of bogus sympathy that has been added for good measure:

We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

I'd further speculate that the policy violation that Linn stands accused of is using a friend's UK address to buy Amazon UK English Kindle books from Norway. This is a symptom of Amazon's -- and every single other ebook retailer's -- hopelessness at managing "open territory" for ebooks.

That sounds very plausible, and means that Jordet Nygaard is essentially being punished for the publishing industry's incompetence when it comes to operating in a global online market, where national boundaries make no sense. Bad as that is, it's only a side issue here. What's most troubling is that Amazon not only closed down Jordet Nygaard's account, forbade her from ever opening up one again, and refused to discuss any aspect of its actions with her, but that it apparently has the capability to lock her out from all Kindle ebooks on any device -- and did so.

If you didn't take the hint when Amazon erased a couple of Orwell's books back in 2009, maybe this latest case involving the alleged remote lockout from all ebooks will finally get across the key message here: those Kindle ebooks you thought you had purchased, are actually only rented to you, and can be denied to you without explanation, and without recompense, any time Amazon wants to. The only ebooks you will ever truly own are those stored in open formats without DRM, which therefore allow backups to be made, and used anywhere.

from the no-more-barriers dept

As the recent news about ebooks has mostly revolved around the price-fixing settlement that was just approved, it's worth pointing out, or reiterating, how the ebook market continues to take off despite being a digital marketplace with all the same potential pitfalls as the recording industry. Despite those potential troubles, we continue to see a rise in the popularity and saleability of self-published authors, long sufferers of the antiquated myth that if you weren't published by a big publishing house you weren't really published at all.

Take this recent story from CNN, which details how Amazon coincided their release of several new e-readers and tablets with a press bit showing how 27 of the top 100 Amazon eBooks are Kindle Direct Publishing books. Considering the outlook on self-publishing before e-publishing came to be somewhat commonplace, numbers like this are significant.

"Most of my months are six-figure months," said Hugh Howey, a 37-year-old Florida author whose "Wool" series of digital books was highlighted by Amazon. "It's more than I ever hoped to make in a year."

The company says some authors, including Theresa Ragen, who appeared in a promotional video during the Amazon event, have sold hundreds of thousands of books.

The article goes on to note how some of these now-successful self-published authors are the same people that could have given up after receiving a dozen rejection slips for their books from agents and publishers. Perhaps more to the point, twenty years ago these authors would have been forced to give up on those books, because the publishing companies were the gatekeepers and publishing books only worked economically because of the kind of scale those publishers could command. Digital printing alleviated some of the need for that scale and allowed for self-publishing, except that then a combination of publishers and brick-and-mortar bookstores acted as the next barrier for self-published authors, such that few in the public could even find a way to buy these books.

With the rise of the eBook, the only remaining barriers are the ability to get noticed and the ablility to write a compelling book.

"Fact is that authors no longer need a publisher," Bernard Starr wrote at The Huffington Post. "And more and more writers are awakening to the realization that if you are not a high-profile author who can command large sales, a traditional publisher will do little for you beyond editing and printing your book."

For Howey, author of the "Wool" series, the direct-publishing platform has opened up a life he never imagined was possible -- one where he is paid to write full-time.

Experiences like Howey's are important to highlight, because the inevitable response from detractors of eBook self-publishing will be to point out that it is only a small percentage of self-published authors that are making significant money. Even the CNN article says as much. My response is simple: so what? Did the old system, under which publishers and bookstores acted as gatekeepers, not have similar results, with only a fraction of authors making significant money from their books? And what of all the authors and books who would never be heard under that system? What of the manuscripts that would lay dusty and alone in the drawer?

That is the true benefit of self-publishing in the digital age. As the barriers come down and sales go up, the stigma of self-publishing will be buried under all the dollars previously un-published authors are collecting. This despite their playing in a digital realm that would be open to piracy, if people simply refused to support authors. But that isn't happening. Sales are on the rise, and culture is rising with them.

from the success-stories dept

We've written a lot about the incredible new ecosystem of independent, self-published ebooks, which in a few short years (with the help of huge success stories like Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath) has largely eliminated the stigma of what we once called "vanity publishing", to the point that even traditionally published authors are deciding to go it alone.

Kindle Direct Publishing has quickly taken on astonishing scale – more than a thousand KDP authors now each sell more than a thousand copies a month, some have already reached hundreds of thousands of sales, and two have already joined the Kindle Million Club.

Under the old system, many of these authors would likely still be sending out manuscripts, hoping for the lucky convergence of circumstances that puts it in the right pile in front of the right reader when they're in the right mood. There's still some disdain for self-publishing in some circles—but with the open playing field that has been created, the increasing number of authors flocking to it, and a growing roster of success stories, it won't be long before that too starts to change.

from the there's-no-hole-on-earth-big-enough-to-bury-The-Internet dept

Quick quiz on crisis management, internet-style:

Exercise 1: The product you've just introduced is a buggy mess, short on content and backed with terrible customer service. What do you do?

a.) Bite the bullet and start handing out refunds
b.) Start patching like hell and fire your current Customer Service team
c.) Drain all bank accounts and reorganize under the name Net Sortie, LLC.
d.) Whistle nonchalantly while sweeping bad reviews under the rug

If you answered "d," then congratulations! You've lost the battle and the war!

No matter how many companies line up to play the "I'd Like to Lose at the Internet" game and walk away empty shells of their former selves, there's always another player ready to step up and take a swing at wishing its problems into the Google Cache cornfield.

Rakuten launched the Kobo Touch in Japan with the expectation that they would dominate their home market. They are native to the country, and Rakuten does have a sizable retail presence there. Given their technical and CS resources, you’d think they would have been able to pull this off.

Unfortunately, it now looks like Rakuten has paved the way for Amazon to dominate yet another ebook market.This launch is rapidly turning into a debacle and it’s going to damage Rakuten’s reputation. And according to some of the tweets I’ve seen (in Japanese) it already is.

So, what went wrong? Well, many, many things. First off, while the firmware was solid, the desktop software was a disaster. If installation failed on the PC, a rather common situation according to the reviews, it pretty much made the Kobo Reader useless. Secondly, Rakuten's promotional work pointed towards 30,000 titles being available at launch. Instead, there were 18,894 titles and, as is pointed out in the comments, many of those were public domain. Last, but not least, purchasers now holding a shiny brick were treated badly by Rakuten's customer service.

Rakuten was understandably perturbed by this failed launch and decided the best course of action would be to pretend it just wasn't happening.

It’s been just under a week since the Kobo Touch started shipping in Japan, and things are going so well that Rakuten has removed from their website all the reviews of the Kobo Touch.

No, seriously, all of the reviews are down – both good and bad. I suppose there were too many people writing things like “I’m going to buy a Kindle” and that upset someone at Rakuten.

For a tech company, you'd think Rakuten would be a bit more familiar with how this "The Internet" works. You can't just pull the electronic wool over everyone's eyes and hope to sneak away undetected. The Internet never forgets. And even if it could, there's always a helpful person or two willing to remind it where all that stuff is stashed.

Luckily one of Rakuten’s potential customers tipped me to the story, including giving me a link to a blog that had collected responses and a screenshot of the review page before Raskuten removed it. That’s why I can show you things like this:

If you can’t see the image above, it says that the Kobo Touch has a 3 star rating largely due to the vast number of 1 star reviews.

This response is so wrong and yet so common. Donna Barstow, law schools, the freakin' medical community. Pretty much anyone who's ever heard the term Streisand Effect whispered in their general direction has attempted to delete damning content, either of their own or created by others, only to find it resurrected in Google's Cache or the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. It's definitely a knee-jerk response, but it seems to have a steep learning curve attached to it. Kobo screwed up and then doubled down by hiding the reviews. What does that say about the company and its future relationship with its customers?

Folks, they took the reviews down from the website so new customers wouldn’t be warned about the many problems. I want you to look past the fact they did it and think about how customers will feel once they discover the deception. That is what will make this a major debacle and not merely an embarrassment for Rakuten.

A bad launch could be recovered from. This is closer to being a systematic effort to lie to their customers. Okay, eventually people will forgive Rakuten, but in the short run this debacle could drive readers to Amazon.

Rakuten, by botching its launch, hurt itself a little. By covering it up, it did a ton of self-inflicted damage. You can't just flip "trust" on and off like a light switch. It's earned. And if it wanted to take on Amazon, it couldn't afford a mistake of this magnitude.